Sarah Jane Morris, of The Communards fame, is performing "an extraordinary re-invention" of The Beatles' songs to mark the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre's first anniversary.
But some in Liverpool might remember her for dramatic scenes at the Everyman theatre nearly 30 years ago when a heavily pregnant Sarah Jane collapsed on stage during a three-month run of Blues In The Night. Rushed to the Royal Liverpool Hospital, doctors couldn't find her baby's heartbeat.
Describing it as a "very, very stressful" night, Sarah Jane told the ECHO: "I ended up having pre-eclampsia, my kidneys failed that night. It was all very exciting. He's fine though, the boy is fine, he's now 28 years old, but that was quite dramatic. It was terrifying."
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Sarah Jane, who turned 64 this week, is often teased about naming her singer-songwriter son after the Otis-made lift that carried her down to an emergency C-section. In reality, it reflects her artistic influences - Redding, Rush and "many different Otises".
Best known for her deep vocals contrasting with Jimmy Sommerville's falsetto on The Communard's first album, Sarah Jane's journey into music was an accident. She was born to a Scouse dad once picked as the boy scout to carry scissors for King George V's opening of the Mersey Tunnel in 1934.
He didn't stay put though, raising Sarah Jane and her six older brothers, moving every six months to a year - for a total of 37 times in her life. She broke the chain when she bought her first house at 60.
As a child, she went to 13 different schools because the family was "always moving in the middle of the night" before debt collectors came to repossess their belongings. Sarah Jane said: "It was terrifying but exciting. And actually, it was a childhood that prepared me for the life of a musician, for you never know where you're going to be staying or when you're going to be paid."
Eventually, her dad went to prison on 21 charges of fraud, corruption and theft when she was 17. Sarah Jane said: "We lost our home. We were a big family in a school that didn't know how to deal with that kind of breakup and the kind of mental health issues that we would be going through. It was tough, but it was particularly tough for my mum because we were homeless with a big family."
She added: "I didn't know how to process it. My father, who I thought was God, had been locked away. I didn't understand any of it, and I was very aware that people stopped talking when I came into a room or my mum went into the local shop. We were that family that everyone was talking about."
Six months after quitting school in the middle of A-Levels due to the resulting breakdown, Sarah Jane decided to sign up at South Warwickshire College of Further Education to finish her exams. On her way to the main hall, she crossed paths with a man leaning against the wall smoking.
Whatever he saw in Sarah Jane when she shared her life story, he invited her to join the drama department. It was the same department attended by the now-Reverend Richard Coles, who was a few years below her and friends with her brother.
Richard, with his white dog collar, is a familiar sight as a panellist on comedy shows like Have I Got News For You and, until this week, as presenter of Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 for 12 years.
But in the 1980s he was one half of The Communards with former Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Sommerville. Their music was political, confronting the rampant homophobia, persecution and AIDS epidemic decimating the LGBT+ community in Margaret Thatcher's Britain.
Sarah Jane had already been featured on the cover of NME and in a Granada TV documentary when she was part of The Republic, a band so explicitly political - with songs about the monarchy and the Falklands War - they couldn't get airtime. This new collaboration offered an even bigger future.
The Communards' 1986 single Don't Leave Me This Way, featuring Sarah Jane, reached number one in the UK, Irish, Dutch and US Dance charts, and sold half a million copies in the UK alone. Sarah Jane said: "Jimmy was this petite, redheaded guy with a very high voice, and I was a very tall, redheaded woman with a very low voice.
"It was just the perfect contrast in those times. During that Thatcher period, you needed a way of partying, of letting your hair down. There was so much nonsense happening, so that song was perfect. It was the release people needed.
"It was really exciting. I mean, I'd been in a lot of bands up until that point, and they'd all been fantastic, but none of them made any kind of money. And then suddenly, you're number one all over the world."
Sarah Jane's first gig with Jimmy and Richard, before jetting off to record The Communard's first album in America, was at a Gays the Word benefit at The Fridge nightclub in Brixton.
They were there thanks to their friend Mark Ashton, a Northern Irish communist, LGBT+ rights activist, and co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, depicted in the 2014 film Pride. He died due to complications from AIDS in 1987.
Sarah Jane described him as "the most fantastic guy", saying: "We were already political, but he politicised us even more. I mean, what energy. He was an extraordinary man, extraordinary."
Seeing Jimmy venture out in a wig, or dressed as a woman, to escape fans or avoid homophobic hostility while on tour turned Sarah Jane off the idea of pursuing a pop career. She said: "I remember thinking, I don't want that kind of life where everybody knows who I am.
"It was great to be that successful, but I did think, 'I don't know whether that's for me, I don't know whether I want to share my life in that way'. I've had longevity, I'm 64 and I'm still doing it. Had I continued to try and have that pop success, I don't think I'd still be doing it.
"I learnt a lot from that success, and I know who I am and I know what I want to do now. I finance it, I do it myself. I've got nobody else to answer to but me. I manage myself, I agent myself, I write my own material. It feels like a good place to be. The buck stops with me."
Just before lockdown three years ago, Sarah Jane had started work on an Italian project called 'I Killed The Beatles'. Set in the prison cell of Mark Chapman, who murdered John Lennon, it featured an arrangement of the band's songs performed by Sarah Jane and the Solis String Quartet.
Cut short by the pandemic, they recorded the songs with Sarah Jane in the UK and the quartet in Naples, performing them live in Italy as 'All You Need Is Love' for the first time last year. This Saturday, March 25 at 7.30pm, they will perform at The Tung Auditorium to mark the anniversary of the University of Liverpool's Yoko Ono Lennon Centre, which was opened by Sean Ono Lennon last year.
Announcing the show, the Tung Auditorium described as a "fabulous rendition of songs" showcasing Sarah Jane's "four octave range from booming baritone to poignant soprano, combined with the funky, dramatic, sonic factory of a contemporary string quartet at the height of their powers".
Sarah Jane said: "These boys from Naples can't believe they're going to be playing The Beatles songs in Liverpool at the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre."
Richard Hartwell, artistic director at the Tung Auditorium, said: "It's been a fantastic first year at The Tung Auditorium. It's been an honour to showcase an eclectic programme of solo, chamber, choral and orchestral performances as well as a variety of jazz, folk, pop, electro-acoustic and experimental music.
"It's great that we've also formed partnerships with some fantastic local organisations including Liverpool Philharmonic and Allerton Brass, Milap and Liverpool Mozart Orchestra. We've had some great feedback from our audiences so far about the cutting-edge sound quality at The Tung and we look forward to welcoming many more people through our doors for more fantastic musical, creative and cultural experiences in years to come."
You can buy tickets for All You Need Is Love at the Tung Auditorium here.
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